The New York Jets’ future at the quarterback position has not been this murky in quite some time. There is no consensus on which direction they will go; some people see New York drafting a franchise quarterback, while others see them pursuing one of the top free agents.
As part of the latter camp, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that the Jets are a “sleeper option” to sign Justin Fields in free agency. For multiple reasons, Fields is an intriguing fit for the Jets’ predicament. He is good enough to be considered a quality backup at the minimum while still being young enough to hypothetically have potential for significant improvement. Bringing him in to compete for the starting job seems like an appealing option.
However, Fowler’s report came with a caveat. He says that Fields “wants a clean runway to start a full season” and “would like to be the guy wherever he goes.”
Fields is justified to seek out that type of situation and to have a high level of confidence in himself. But is there any team out there that would actually give him a starting job without competition? And should the Jets consider being that team?
Let’s dive into Fields’ 2024 season with the Pittsburgh Steelers to gain a better understanding of where the former 11th overall pick stands in his development as he enters his age-26 season.
Large improvement in efficiency, but still lackluster in QB-independent metrics
In terms of efficiency, the 2024 season was the best of Fields’ four-year career in multiple important categories.
According to RBSDM, Fields ranked 17th out of 42 qualified quarterbacks in adjusted EPA per play (0.116). He was also 14th with a 2.4 completion percentage over expected (CPOE). His EPA+CPOE composite score (0.100) ranked 17th.
This was a massive improvement compared to the first three years of Fields’ career. From 2021-23, Fields ranked 34th in adjusted EPA per play (-0.008), 30th in CPOE (-1.1), and 33rd in EPA+CPOE composite (0.036) out of 41 qualifiers.
A quarterback’s surroundings play a major role in his production, so it is worthwhile to compare Fields’ production to another quarterback who played in the same situation.
In 2024, Fields was a minor upgrade compared to his replacement, Russell Wilson, who ranked 20th out of 42 in EPA+CPOE composite (0.084) compared to Fields’ No. 17 placement. Wilson ranked eight spots above Fields in CPOE, although Fields ranked eight spots above Wilson in EPA/play (arguably the more important metric).
Moving on to more traditional metrics, Fields set many career-highs in 2024:
- Completion rate (65.8%) – Previous best: 61.4%
- Interception rate (0.6%) – Previous best: 2.4%
- Passer rating (93.3) – Previous best: 86.3
- Sack rate (9.0%) – Previous best: 10.6%
Fields’ 93.3 passer rating was one point above the NFL average of 92.3, marking the first season of his career in which he had a passer rating above the league average. It placed him 19th out of 42 qualifiers.
Production-wise, Fields seemed to be a slightly above-average starter in 2024, according to results-based metrics like EPA/play and passer rating.
However, metrics designed to isolate the QB’s impact did not view Fields as highly.
ESPN’s QBR metric was less fond of Fields, placing him 27th of 42 with a 50.8 mark. This was not a career-high for Fields, as he earned a 56.3 QBR in 2022.
QBR accounts for various aspects of the QB’s support (drops, pressure, receiver separation, opponent quality, etc.) in ways that EPA/play and passer rating do not. Fields’ significantly lower ranking in QBR suggests that his supporting cast – or, more likely, pure luck (which we will get to) – propped up his efficiency compared to his actual performance as an individual.
Fields also ranked 27th in Pro Football Focus’ grading system, earning a 71.0 overall grade (second-best of career, trailing 2023). Since PFF grades are calculated based on the film, his No. 27 ranking in this category corroborates QBR’s assessment that, when accounting for external factors, Fields was not actually as good as his raw efficiency suggests.
Overall, it can be argued that Fields performed around the level of a below-average starting quarterback in 2024 (top 20-25 range). He generated the most efficient results of his career by a wide margin, even managing to reach above-average status in that regard. But he was still decently below average in metrics that isolate the QB’s performance, outweighing his slightly above-average efficiency.
Altogether, that represents a slight leap compared to Fields’ play over the first three years of his career, which straddled the line between bottom-end starter and high-end backup.
Areas of improvement
Short accuracy
Fields was frustratingly erratic at converting his layups with the Bears. He curbed this issue in Pittsburgh, specifically with incredible improvement to his short accuracy.
In 2024, Fields posted an adjusted completion percentage of 88.5% on short throws (0-9 air yards), which led the NFL. His previous career-high was 82.2% in 2023, which ranked 19th out of 42 qualifiers.
Clean-pocket passing
The Bears’ offensive line was often blamed for Fields’ woes in Chicago. However, Fields failed to shine even when he was well-protected. This is an area where he showed improvement in Pittsburgh, as he posted the best clean-pocket numbers of his career.
When throwing from a clean pocket in 2024, Fields had an 80.7% adjusted completion percentage (14th of 42) and a 104.9 passer rating (16th), both career-highs.
Ball security(?)
Fields’ spike in efficiency was primarily driven by his drastically improved ball security. He threw just one interception on 161 pass attempts, resulting in a career-low interception rate of 0.6%. That is precisely one quarter of his previous career-low (2.4%). Only Justin Herbert had a lower rate among qualifiers in 2024.
However, it is fair to be skeptical about the sustainability of Fields’ low INT%. Not only is it a drastic departure from his career norms – over a relatively small sample size, no less – but Fields lucked out a few times. He was charged with six turnover-worthy throws, per Pro Football Focus, which means he got away with five of them.
In fairness to Fields, his rate of turnover-worthy throws was still respectable and a large improvement over his first three seasons. He had a turnover-worthy throw rate of 2.8%, ranking 19th-best out of 42 qualifiers. His career average in Chicago was 3.8%, which is equal to Joe Flacco’s 34th-ranked mark in 2024.
So, give Fields credit where it’s due for the improvement, but his 0.6% interception rate seems unlikely to be sustained. When you have a second-ranked INT% and a 19th-ranked TWT%, it signals that a spike in interceptions is coming.
The safe bet is that Fields will decline to an approximately league-average INT% in the future. That would be a nice place for him to settle in after where he started out, but it’s not close to the shockingly low INT% that was responsible for making him look good in 2024.
It begs the question: can Fields be effective in 2025 without relying on such a low INT%? If his INT% normalizes, he must make up for it with improvement in other areas.
Areas that remain weaknesses
Sacks/hanging onto the ball
Fields absorbed a career-low sack rate of 9.0% in 2024, but that was still the seventh-worst rate among 42 qualifiers, which highlights just how immensely he struggles in this area. His career sack rate of 11.9% is the highest among quarterbacks with at least 600 pass attempts since 2021. (Sacks are a quarterback stat, not an indicator of pass-blocking quality.)
This is a product of Fields’ propensity for holding onto the ball too long. For his career, he has an average time-to-throw of 3.29 seconds.
Like his sack rate, Fields improved significantly in this area last season, but he was coming from such a low place that he still ranked near the bottom despite the improvement. After leading the NFL at 3.39 seconds in 2023, he cut his TTT down to 3.08 in 2024, yet that was still third-highest.
Fields remains one of the league’s worst quarterbacks at creating his own pressure. According to PFF, Fields was responsible for 21.9% of the pressures he absorbed in 2024, the fifth-worst rate among 43 qualifiers.
Playing on-time and within the structure of the offense remains a work in progress for Fields. There were signs of improvement in 2024, but he is so far behind that he still needs multiple steps forward just to become functional in this area.
Fumbles
While Fields sliced his interception rate in 2024, he remained extremely prone to fumbles, which has been an enormous problem throughout his career.
Fields had six fumbles on 239 combined dropbacks-plus-designed rush attempts, giving him a fumble rate of 2.5% that ranked fourth-worst among 42 qualifiers. It is nearly the same as his 2.6% rate over his first three seasons (38 fumbles on 1,449 plays). Only Kirk Cousins, Cooper Rush, and Will Levis fumbled on a higher percentage of their plays in 2024.
As with his interceptions, Fields got lucky in the fumble department, as he lost just one of his six fumbles in 2024. In total, he combined for 12 turnover-worthy throws and fumbles, yet only two of them were converted to turnovers. That is a remarkable stroke of luck, explaining why Fields’ efficiency rankings were good despite his QBR and PFF rankings being significantly worse.
Balancing explosiveness and consistency
While Fields became more consistent in certain areas this past season, it came at the cost of his signature highlight-reel explosiveness. Fields’ peaks were much higher and much more frequent in Chicago, even if he was far more erratic.
With the Steelers, Fields set a career-high in completion percentage (65.8%), but he had to become less aggressive to do it. He averaged a career-low 10.4 yards per completion (27th of 42), nearly a full yard below his previous low (11.3). Because of the drop in yards per completion, Fields’ 6.9 yards per attempt was actually below his career average (7.0) despite the rise in completion percentage.
Fields’ deep passing used to be one of his strengths, but that part of his game was muted in 2024. In 2023, Fields completed 23-of-52 deep attempts (44.2%) for 673 yards and eight touchdowns. In 2024, he went 6-of-19 (31.6%) for 206 yards and no touchdowns. This massive drop in efficiency was coupled with a drop in frequency; 14.1% of Fields’ pass attempts came in the deep range in 2023, versus 11.7% in 2024. His rate of short passes rose from 42.4% to 53.7%.
This extended to Fields’ rushing game, too. While he got the ball out quicker and tried to rely on his legs less frequently (he scrambled on a career-low 9.1% of his dropbacks), he averaged a career-low 4.7 yards per rush attempt. Only 30.6% of his rush attempts resulted in a first down, lower than each of his previous two seasons (34.8% in 2023, 40.6% in 2022).
Like his passing game, Fields couldn’t generate big runs as easily when he wasn’t playing with reckless abandon. In 2023, Fields had 26 runs for 10+ yards, representing 21% of his 124 attempts. He fell to eight runs for 10+ yards in 2024, making up just 12.9% of his 62 attempts.
We know Fields can rack up big-time plays when it comes at the cost of many negative plays. But when he finally showed some signs of settling his game down, the big-time plays evaporated. It is positive that he started looking a little more stable at managing the game, but the benefit of that is canceled out if he has to drastically lessen his explosiveness to pull it off.
If you could combine Fields’ high points in 2022-23 with the improved consistency and higher floor that he displayed in 2024, you would have a great quarterback. But we don’t know if he is capable of that. He has yet to show one without sacrificing the other.
Until you can blend both sides of the position, you are limited to being a low-end starter at best. When looking at most of the league’s fringe starter/backup quarterbacks, they typically lean strongly toward one of those two sides. For instance, Tyrod Taylor and Jacoby Brissett are overly safe game managers, while Jameis Winston is a reckless gunslinger, as was Ryan Fitzpatrick. What separates the league’s starting quarterbacks is the ability to play both sides at once, alternating on a weekly basis throughout the season depending on what each game calls for.
Can Fields develop to the point where he can make his signature plays without being reckless, or manage the game without sacrificing explosiveness? That is the primary question he must answer to prove he is a starting quarterback.
Same old Justin Fields?
It is easy to fall for Fields’ apparent improvement after taking one glance at his 2024 stats. However, when you dig deeper, it starts to feel like we are talking about the same guy who was tossed aside by the team that drafted him after only three seasons.
Purely based on the results of his dropbacks, Fields was much more efficient in 2024 than he was previously. He was even above-average among starters in some key categories. However, that spike in efficiency was mostly driven by his elite turnover avoidance, which seems to have been a product of pure luck rather than actual improvement. Once Fields’ turnover luck regresses to the mean, it is difficult to see him being nearly as efficient as he was in 2024.
There are a handful of areas where Fields was certainly better, such as his short passing and his clean-pocket passing. However, many of the same issues that have plagued him throughout his career are still there. He remains extremely prone to sacks and fumbles, while he still struggles to get the ball out on-time.
It is also concerning that many of Fields’ improvements were countered by declines in areas that used to be strengths, suggesting he might not be capable of playing a well-rounded game. Sure, he cut down his sacks and completed a higher percentage of his passes by turning into a Checkdown Charlie, but any quarterback can do that. While his peaks are rare for the position, he has only shown he can produce them while simultaneously racking up an abhorrent rate of sacks and turnovers.
In my opinion, Fields is being a little too optimistic to think he has earned the right to be viewed as “the guy” for any NFL team in 2025. He has a high enough floor and intriguing enough potential to compete for a job, but it would be a mistake for any NFL team to buy into his 2024 season as an indicator that he is now a surefire starter.
The Jets already have a high-floor veteran stopgap in Tyrod Taylor. If Fields can be added at an affordable price and is open to a fair competition with Taylor, he is worth bringing aboard. He is certainly one of the 32 best quarterbacks in the league, which would make him a high-ranked backup or a viable bridge starter. Plus, at just 26 years old in March, he is still plenty young enough to be considered a candidate for a sudden breakout, as supported by the recent turnarounds of guys like Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Geno Smith.
But to hand Fields a lofty contract and peg him as a starter would be a mistake. While good fortune propped his numbers up to seemingly above-average levels, a peek beneath the hood shows that Fields still has a very long way to go before he should be considered a penciled-in starting quarterback.
